Lettice Knollys was born in 1543, almost certainly at
Greys Court at Rotherfield Greys in Oxfordshire. Her father, Sir
Francis Knollys, later became Treasurer of the Household to Queen
Elizabeth, a Knight of the Garter and a wise counsellor to his
monarch. He was a stern Protestant who had been in
exile in Germany in the reign of Queen Mary. Lettice's mother was Catherine Carey, daughter of the eldest sister of
Queen Anne Boleyn. Lettice was therefore first cousin once removed to Queen
Elizabeth and one of her nearest relatives at the time she ascended the
throne: a situation which could be both a source of affluence and a road
to disaster.

In her early youth, Lettice was
educated by the Reading scholar, Jocelyn
Palmer, who was soon to become a Protestant martyr. In her late teens, she spent much time
at her father's town-house
in Reading, where, no
doubt, she was nourished by her father's resolute faith that she
clung to throughout her long life. References are not wanting in
contemporary writings to show that the fatal gift of beauty had not been
denied her and we soon find her as a maid of honour at court and amid the glittering throng
surrounding Queen Elizabeth at the palaces of Whitehall, Greenwich and Windsor,
"moving, doubtless, a foremost figure among the younger divinities of
that heaven" and noting with interest, if not occasional alarm, the
"states and stomachs of the Norreyses and the Knollyses" who
were apparently always at loggerheads. It was probably under such
conditions that she met her first husband, Walter Devereux, Viscount
Hereford and, afterwards, Earl of Essex.

Essex had succeeded his father as second
Viscount Hereford in September 1558, a few weeks before Elizabeth came to
the throne. He was then a youth just entering his eighteenth year. Lettice
and he were probably married around 1562, and five children soon joined
the union: Penelope, Dorothy, Robert, Walter and Francis (who died young).
The couple's favoured place at court
underwent a minor blip in 1568, when Devereux was implicated in the plans
for bringing about a marriage between Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Duke
of Norfolk. The Queen was not amused and the couple were obliged to retire
to the Viscount's Welsh homeland. Nothing is heard of them until the end
of the following year, when Devereux was back, assisting in the break-up
of the Northern Rebellion. About this time, he appears to have become
particularly friendly with the Earl of Leicester and, possibly through the
latter's influence, was raised further within the peerage to the Earldom
of Essex. This was the zenith of his career. Very soon afterwards, he
proposed that the Queen allow him to undertake the pacification and
reduction of a certain disturbed district in the north of Ireland, on
condition of being put in possession of half the lands he should recover
from the rebels. This adventure was apparently suggested to him by
Leicester who wanted him out of the way for, Fuller says, he "loved
the Earl's nearest relation [meaning his wife] better than he loved
the Earl himself." Lettice remained in London, at Durham House on the
Strand, only a stone's throw from Leicester House. In the Summer of 1575,
the two were both on progress with the Queen, when the Sheriff of
Warwickshire refused to wear Leicester's livery at Kenilworth Castle
because the latter - whom he called a whoremaster - had "private
access to the Countess of Essex."

In December 1575, a Spaniard named de Guaras
reported that there was a "great enmity between the Earl of Leicester
and the Earl of Essex in consequence....of the fact that while Essex was
in Ireland his wife had two children by Leicester." Other rumours
indicated that the lady had had at least one abortion. It is therefore,
perhaps, not surprising that, when Essex's venture turned out to be a
complete failure, the financially embarrassed Earl resigned his command in Ireland
but made no attempt to rejoin his wife and family after nearly two
years' absence from them. Later, he appears to have come to England, but
returned to Ireland in the Spring of 1576 with the comparatively
insignificant title of Earl Marshal of Ireland. On 22nd September of
that year, he died from a fatal attack of dysentery.

Almost ten years later, a book called "Leicester's
Commonwealth," was published, which placed the responsibility for
the Earl of Essex's death firmly at the hands of his wife and her
lover, the Earl of Leicester. A poison was said to have been prepared by
an Italian surgeon who had recently attached himself to Leicester. It was
administered in a cup of wine at a merchant's house in Dublin and ended up
killing a certain Mrs. Alice Draycot at the same time! This was not the
first murder with which Leicester had been charged by popular opinion.
Lord Robert Dudley, as he was originally called, was the fifth of the
eight sons of John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, later Duke of Northumberland,
who was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1553 after master-minding the accession
to the throne of his daughter-in-law, the hapless Lady Jane Grey. Robert's
dashing good looks had allowed him to rise quickly in the Queen's favour
and she had showered him with lucrative appointments, gifts of land and
the title of Earl of Leicester. It was widely rumoured that the monarch
was in love with him and Dudley certainly did his best to realize his
ambition to be King of England. Hence, he did not emerge from the death of
his first wife, Amy Robsart, with an
unblemished reputation.

Having finally abandoned all hopes of the
Queen's hand, Leicester had turned to wooing the Countess of Essex, an
enterprise which, as already noted, was provocative of no little scandal.
Even Shakespeare appears to refer to their liaison - with an obscurity
beyond most people's understanding - during Oberon's vision in the "Midsummer
Night's Dream." In 1578, Lettice Knollys married the Earl of
Leicester. The ceremony was first performed at Kenilworth, but Lettice's
father, Sir Francis Knollys, who was well aware of Leicester's
inconstancy, insisted that the union should be performed in his own
presence, with some witnesses by, and a public notary. The ceremony was
thus repeated, on 21st September 1578 at Wanstead in Essex, in the
presence of Leicester's brother, the Earl of Warwick, Lord North, the
lady's father and others. Lettice is said to have looked as if she were
with child at the time. The couple's only son, Robert, Lord Denbigh -
"The Noble Impe" - was certainly born some time during the
following year; but he died at Wanstead on 19th July 1584. Lettice was
back at Court in July 1579, with a new wardrobe that rivalled the Queen's,
but the fact of her marriage was still
carefully kept from Elizabeth, although very many courtiers were in on the
secret. In August 1579, however, M. de Simier, the French Ambassador who was
negotiating the Queen's marriage to the Duke of Alençon, suddenly broke
the news to her. Elizabeth behaved as if she were heartbroken and, three
days later, promised to accept Alençon on his own terms. She is said to
have boxed the Countess' ears and banished her, commenting that as
"but one sun lighted the sky," so she would "have but one
Queen of England". She ordered
Leicester to confine himself to Greenwich Palace and talked of sending him
to the Tower, but Sussex advised her to be merciful. Leicester's friends
declared that he voluntarily became a prisoner in his own chamber on the
pretence of being unwell. In contrast to her husband, Lettice rebelled in
style; and, in a series of attempts at being mistaken for her look-alike
Royal cousin, she would ride through the streets of London in her
carriage, with her ladies in coaches behind her. The ruse was usually successful.
The couple's fall from grace was apparent to all and in
the November, Leicester wrote a letter to Burghley, in which he compained,
"I have lost both youth and liberty and all my fortune reposed in
her."

From his marriage with Lettice, with whatsoever object or under
whatsoever compulsion, Leicester never made his escape. Wanstead, which had been purchased a few months before
their marriage, was their favourite home and the Queen
visited them there. It is even said that Leicester took kindly to the matrimonial yoke and became quite domesticated
in his later years. It was generally believed, however, that this was
largely because Lettice wore the trousers in their relationship. The
Frenchman, Mauvissiere, wrote that Leicester was greatly influenced by his
wife and only introduced her to those to whom he wished to show special
favour. When, in 1583, the Countess of Leicester planned to marry her
daughter, Dorothy Devereux, to the King of Scots, Queen Elizabeth is
reported to have sworn that if she could find no other way to check Lady
Leicester's ambition she would proclaim her all over Christendom as the
whore she was and prove Leicester a cuckold; for she would "sooner
the Scots King lost his Crown" than be married to the daughter of a
"she-wolf."

During their married life, the fickle Queen
periodically elevated and depressed Leicester by the award of honours and
the denial of liberty. On 8th December 1585, Leicester was sent to the Low
Countries and, on 25th January following, he made Governor-General of the
Netherlands. Lettice proposed to join him there and set up a Court of her
own; but Elizabeth discovered her plans and forbade her to leave the
country. Soon after Leicester's return, an army was raised in contemplation of the
Spanish invasion. Elizabeth intended him to be her
Lieutenant-General for England and Ireland but, deferring to the advice
of Burghley and Hatton, the letters patent were never executed. In
disgust, Leicester left the Court for Kenilworth Castle, but broke his
journey at a house he had at Cornbury in Oxfordshire. Here, under somewhat
mysterious circumstances, he was taken suddenly ill and died of "a
continual fever, as 'twas said" on 4th September 1588.

Once again, rumour flew on the wings of the
wind and the name of Lettice Knollys was on every tongue. Current gossip,
at no time more venomous and widespread than in Elizabeth's day,
immediately fastened upon her the guilt of Leicester's death by poison. It
was remarked that Leicester died within seven or eight miles of Cumnor,
the spot where Amy Robsart had met her death almost on the very day,
twenty-eight years before; and it was bruited abroad that it was only
justice that the wife of his youth should be avenged by the wife of his
age. Ben Jonson tells the story that Leicester had given his wife "a
bottle of liquor which he willed her to use in any faintness, which she,
not knowing it was poison, gave him, and so he died". Bliss, in his
notes to the 'Athenae Oxon,' was the first to print a contemporary
narrative to the effect that the Countess had fallen in love with
Christopher Blount, Leicester's Gentleman of the Horse; that Leicester had
taken Blount on an expedition to Holland with the intention of killing
him, but had failed in the endeavour; that the Countess, suspecting her
husband's plot, gave him a poisonous cordial after a heavy meal while she
was alone with him at Cornbury. Blount married the Countess after
Leicester's death, and the narrator of the story gives as his authority
William Haynes, Leicester's page and gentleman of the bedchamber, who saw
the fatal cup handed to his master. But the story seems improbable in face
of the post-mortem examination, which was stated to show no trace of
poison.

Leicester was buried in the Beauchamp Chapel
of the Collegiate Church in Warwick. The gorgeous funeral cost £4,000 and
there, near the grave of their son, Lord Denbigh, Lettice erected an elaborate altar-tomb,
with a long Latin inscription to his memory. Dated at Middleburg, 1st
August 1587, Leicester's will appointed Wanstead was for the
Countess's Dower-House. She was his sole executrix, and proved the will
two days after his death. His personal estate was valued at £29,820. The
Countess, of course, resisted the efforts of Leicester's son by Lady
Douglas Sheffield, Sir Robert Dudley - self-styled 'Duke of
Northumberland' - to prove his legitimacy.

After marrying Sir Christopher Blount in
July 1589 - another unpopular move with the Queen - Lettice lived a life
of the disgraced, mostly at Drayton Bassett in Staffordshire. She remained on friendly terms,
however, with her son by her first marriage, Robert, 2nd Earl
of Essex, the Queen's new favourite and took some part in the
education of her grandson, Robert (later 3rd Earl of Essex). In 1597, the
Earl made a number of attempts to reconcile the two ladies. The Queen
avoided two meetings before the two eventually came face to face, and
Lettice was able to present her cousin with a jewel. A subsequent request
for permission to return to Court was, however, refused and the Countess
was, once more, forbidden access to the Monarch. After a quarrel with the
Queen the following year, Essex was hiding at Wanstead in a strop when his
mother advised him against imitating Leicester, who often feigned illness
in the hope of winning the Queen over. Later, in 1599, Lettice was
forbidden to see her son during his imprisonment at York House (Whitehall)
but, upon his move to Essex House where she had been living, she was
permitted a single interview. In February 1601, Essex took the lead in a foolish plot against the Queen
for which both he and Blount,
his step-father, were executed on Tower Hill on 25th February and 17th
March respectively. Lettice retired
to Drayton Bassett in Staffordshire and died there, vigorous to the last,
on 25th December 1634, aged 94. She was buried beside the Earl of
Leicester at Warwick and some verses by her great grandson, Gervase Clifton, concerning her
life, were painted on a tablet hung hear her tomb: "she was in her
younger years matched with two great English peers; she that did supply
the wars with thunder, and the court with stars".